The Stone Giant Read Free Page A

Stover had preached an entire sermon on it. It was something in the way of a lesson, wasn’t it? And this business about stealing pies ...
    Tie,’ said Escargot.
    “Pardon me?”: asked Bastable amiably.
    ‘There was only one pie involved. And stealing doesn’t enter into it, does it? A man’s own pie, after all, made of peaches from his own well-tended garden.’
    Mayor Bastable cast a glance toward Escargot’s weedy orchard with its overgrown trees. He widened his eyes and shrugged, as if to say that he’d only been passing on what he knew about the case. ‘You shouldn’t have walked out on her, old man.’
    ‘I went fishing,’ said Escargot, forgetting in a rush everything he’d convinced himself of only moments before. ‘She pitched me out without a backward glance. Two years of bliss up the flume. Women are mad is what I think. Chemistry is what it is. I’ve ...’
    Bastable put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head, a set smile on his lips. ‘We know just how you feel,’ he said, as if such a thing might be vastly calming. ‘We all of us hope you’ll come to terms with this little sadness.’
    ‘We!’ cried Escargot, shrugging off his friend’s hand. ‘Terms! Damn all terms!’ And with that Escargot stormed away toward the village, his teeth set with determination. He’d leave; that’s what he’d do. There were grand places in the world. He’d go to the coast, to the Wonderful Isles. Twombly Town could writher in its own slime; that’s what. He smiled grimly. He rather liked that last bit.
Writher
was a good word – if it was a word. If it wasn’t, it should be, he decided, slowing down and angling toward Stover’s Tavern.
    The tavern was almost empty. It was early, after all. Candles burned in wall sconces, throwing cups of sooty yellow light up the plaster walls. A half hour earlier the floor had been covered with sawdust and shavings and littered with nut shells and sausage rinds and greasy newspaper. It was swept clean now, though, and the tavern maid, Leta, was scooping up heaps of debris with a broad, flat shovel and emptying it into a bucket. A lock of dark hair had fallen across her forehead, and she shoved at it, pausing to poke it in under a red bow at the top of a heavy braid. Immediately the lock mutinied and fell back across her forehead. She looked up and frowned at Escargot, who stood in the doorway gaping at her.
    He’d seen her for the first time a month earlier at Professor Wurzle’s lending library. They’d both been after the same book, or at least books by the same author: G. Smithers of Brompton Village. There was nothing Escargot liked to do more than to lie up with a book and a pipe in the afternoon heat, under an oak if one was handy, or beneath the docks along the River Oriel. He couldn’t much read at home. The interruptions set him crazy. There was always something to do – trash to be hauled away, weeds to be pulled, boxes to be got down off closet shelves, a roomful of furniture to be rearranged a dozen ways, only to end up back where it started. His wife would say something to him from another room in a voice calculated to carry about eight feet. What! he’d shout, knowing that he was expected to drop the book, frivolous thing that it was, and trot round to lend a hand – to squish a harmless bug most often, a bug that was minding its own business, looking for a quiet place to read a bug story and put its feet up, but finding instead the business end of a shoe. Escargot had been the unwilling accessory to countless murders. But he was being petty. He had promised to catch himself if he was in danger of becoming petty, especially out loud. That sort of thing made a person tiresome.
    He watched Leta shove the bucket out the back door and pick up a fat gunny sack. She dumped shavings from it onto the cleaned floor, kicking them under tables with her feet. At the lending library she’d found a book about the harvest festival at Seaside, and Escargot,